Summit County Transportation Meeting – Live Blog

We live-blogged the Summit County Transportation Planning meeting. This meeting was designed to provide an overview of transportation challenges in the area and ask the public for input. Please forgive spelling and grammar errors; the meeting moved pretty fast.

Read more for the play-by-play.

4:16PM:
Leslie Crawford (County Engineer)

• No decision means failure but a transportation system that’s viable will provide success for us all
• Summit County will double in size by 2040, Wasatch County will grow 3X.  Regional employment growth will be also be huge.
• Growth accelerated with the 2002 Olympics.  Snyderville Basin grew 2X as fast as governor’s office predicted
• Leslie Crawford, County Engineer, thanks the crowd for coming and outlines the meeting
• Council member Chris Robinson welcomes the crowd
• This is one of the most crowded meetings we have seen at Richens.  There has to be close to 120 people here.

4:17 PM
Transportation Consultant on Policy (what does community want)

• Monitoring: Should we monitor traffic annually?
• Economy and resorts: Should we have paid parking a Kimball, Canyons, Deer Valley, PCMR, and other key locations?
• Policy Design and Maintenance: Add additional pavement for capacity improvements?
• Policy Interconnect Questions: Do we want to have pedestrian facilities on 224 and 248?  Decrease busing distance requirements
• Policy Multi-modal questions: Do you want bike sharing? Do we want sidewalk and non-nordic maintenance during winter?
• Policy Integration Questions:Do we want to maintain existing traffic volumes?  Do we want transportation management program like employer sponsored ride sharing, no driving, etc.  Do we want increased mixed use development that reduces the amount travel? Do we want dedicated offsite parking with shuttles?
• Different Types of Choices: Policy
• Here to present some key choices

4:20 PM:
Transportation consultant on Transit Issues (what does community want)

• Only 1/3 of growth in Synderville BAsin is local to Snyderville Basin. That means 2/3 is between the basin and other places. So you have to solve that part of the issue too
• Service configuration choices: Should we service everyone with busses within 5 minutes of everyone’s home? Should we focus on intercept parking for shuttling people from Quinn’s and Kimball to PC?  Should we collect people at Kimball junction and shuttle them into town?  Should we have dedicated corridor to places where people want to go
• Technology choices: Should we have Bus Rapid Transit which has its own travel lanes, higher platforms (to speed on/of), can buy tickets ahead of time… similar to a rail service.  Do we want light rail? Should we reserve right of way for future use.
• Should we add wifi on busses, heated bus stops, etc?
• Do we want to continue the existing bus services or expand it to employee bus services?
• Do we want to proactively add busses ahead of time before volume arrives.  Aspen does this.
• Are we willing to wait on bus growth before we add service

4:35 PM:
Transportation consultant on Automobile Issues

• Can’t build our way out of traffic issues
• That’s why solutions focused on autos are not a good solution
• Adding pavement is last resort
• Should we have HOV Lanes?
• Lots of congestion at Ute BLVD and 224.  Maybe eliminate left turns.
• Should we have free shuttles form airport to Basin atractions
• Replacing lights with roundabouts are better for traffic.

4:40 PM
Bike and Pedestrian Issues:

• In order for this to reduce traffic, roads and trails ned to be interconnected.
• Safe routes to schools from neighborhoods
• Be able to bike from Richardson Flats Park and ride into town
• Pedestrian facilities at Kimball Junction could be improved

4:43 PM …In about 10 minutes the public will be invited to put stickers on a board outlining solutions they like and don’t like. This should be interesting…